NewDelhi: During a spirited campaign in the Shakurbasti area of Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal made a vehement attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, accusing them of secretly having malicious intentions towards the people living in slums in the capital city.
Kejriwal, who is pursuing a fourth term as Chief Minister of Delhi, has openly challenged Shah to drop all the cases against the slum dwellers that have been filed in the past ten years within a span of 24 hours. “If you submit an affidavit in court stating that they will be resettled where they are, I will withdraw from the election,” he announced, thus raising the bar even further in a campaign battle that is already extremely fierce.
The AAP leader cast his barbs at Shah’s latest visit to meet slum dwellers, blaming him for sowing distrust and spreading rumors. “Shah says, ‘We’ll build houses where there are slums,’ but he’s hiding the fact that it can only be houses for his pals and builders where these slums exist,” Kejriwal affirmed.
Asserting the poor performance of the BJP, Kejriwal pointed out the scandalous fact that only 4,700 houses had been constructed for the 400,000 slum residents in a decade. “If we continue like this, it will take about 1,000 years to locate a house for all,” he remarked humorously.
Additionally, he claimed that the Railway Ministry has already expressed its intention by extending the land where the Shakurbasti slums stand, maintaining that it was an elaborate conspiracy to knock down the settlement after the elections. “If Delhi votes for the BJP, they will carry out the action of demolishing all the slums in a year’s time,” he said.
The AAP supremo also recalled his actions in 2015, which helped stop the demolitions of the slum, in order to showcase the contrast in approaches between him and the BJP. “In the last decade, the BJP has made three lakh people homeless by cracking down on slum dwellers,” he alleged.
With the Delhi Assembly elections approaching, Kejriwal’s retaliation of the BJP’s slum measures matter has shifted the political spectrum, which has seen housing and land management taking the lead in the campaign.